A man accused of slashing his wife’s throat during a Jamaican vacation has testified she sustained the injury after she attacked him with a knife.

Paul Martin testified Thursday afternoon in Oshawa court that he was protecting himself from an enraged Cathy Clayson when she was injured in 2010. He added that he told Jamaican police a phony tale about being robbed to protect his wife.

“I was confused,” Martin testified.

Martin and his estranged wife are engaged in a family court trial, where Clayson is seeking to have him found civilly responsible for an attack she says occurred on Dec. 23, 2010, on a remote Jamaican road. She is also seeking a divorce, and to have Martin’s supervised access to their two young children terminated.

Clayson testified earlier in this trial that her tumultuous marriage to Martin was all but finished by the time they took the Jamaican trip. She said that Martin drove her to a remote road under the pretense of taking pictures, then slashed twice at her neck with a knife.

Martin, who is representing himself, offered up a very different version of events. He said the former Ajax couple did drive out to take pictures, but Clayson became nervous and the two started to quarrel.

“We started to argue and the argument got more and more heated,” he said. “I knew she was reaching her boiling point.”

Martin said he got out of the SUV and heard Clayson’s door open.

“I looked at her and saw rage in her eyes and I also saw what looked like a knife in her hand,” he said. “She plunged the knife at me and I managed to grab her hand.”

He testified it was as the two struggled Clayson somehow sustained a gash to her neck.

“I pushed her hands away from me. We struggled over the knife and she stopped,” he said. “It was at that point I realized there was blood coming out of her neck.

Martin said he bundled Clayson into the SUV and drove back to the main highway where he began a frantic search for a hospital. Yet amid all the chaos, “I apparently missed a blue sign that had an ‘H.’ ”

Along the way he told his wife he would explain to authorities what had happened, but said that she was adamant he claim they’d been robbed.

When he pulled to the side of the road, Clayson got out of the vehicle, court heard. Martin said he made the “stupid” decision to drive off and look for help on his own.

He said he approached a man and had him call police. He learned eventually Clayson had been taken to hospital.

He stuck to the robbery story when he gave a statement to police, he said. Martin spent most of the night handcuffed to a bench at the police station.

“It was immediately after that the police were saying, your wife’s pointing the finger at you,” he testified.

Martin was charged with attempted murder but went to trial in Jamaica on a lesser charge and was acquitted. The Oshawa trial continues before Superior Court Justice Roger Timms.